Recommended Viewing: General Stone’s exit interview

Very briefly, it is worth your time watch the video below, at least the first seven minutes. Major General Doug Stone, formerly of Task Force 134, gave an exit interview after turning over command of detainee operations in Iraq. I recommend watching his opening remarks as he speaks directly to the point who the detainees are, their motivation, and how he managed to attain a recidivism rate of… well “miniscule”, as he put it is the only way to describe it: only 40 returned out of about 10,000 released.

The transparency and education and training programs have been core to this success. In order to practice public diplomacy, strategic communication, information operations, or psychological operations, one must know the audience, the potential cleavages between the individual and the group, or sub-groups from the larger group. He gets it.